What are we legally obliged to do: re the trans community?

[TheABC]

The discussion on conversion therapy and the GRA got me thinking.
What are our legal obligations (e.g. we can be sued or jailed for getting it wrong) regarding the gender reassignment characteristic? Not the being polite' bit or 'being kind,' but simply what is there in law, as it stands.

According to the Equality Act, it's freedom from discrimination, e.g.

• Businesses cannot refuse to serve a person with the characteristic unless there is a specific reason (e.g. single-sex spaces on a case by case basis).
• They should be able to access education, housing and work without discrimination
• They are protected from bullying or harassment
• They can marry in their preferred gender

Am I missing anything? The law says nothing about pronouns or references (presumably as long as it's not harassment) and the Equality Act is careful to omit single-sex spaces from the characteristic.

Firstly, @TheABC, you need to define who the 'we' are, when you ask your question.

The answer/answers will differ according to that answer as private citizens are not the same as companies or service providers.

Personally, I don't consider I have to do anything in my capacity as a private citizen. I do not have to affirm anybody's belief system or pander to their ego. I would probably deal with anybody who was making those sorts of demands on me by simply removing myself from their sphere. But this is how I treat any pesky person.

I'm not obliged to have a transwomen provide intimate care should my MS get worse. But I'm probably not going to get prompt care if insist

Good point @Rightsraptor. I am thinking from the viewpoint of an ordinary member of the public. For example, our default, if we are socialised females is not to rock the boat and self-exclude/be nice/pretend there is not a problem.

What would happen if we refused to comply? Would using sex-based pronouns instead of preferred pronouns be a crime, for example? If I screamed the house down because a man walked into a female changing room, who legally is in the wrong? Is it discrimination if all the females participants boycotted a sports event in protest because of a male entrant?

I am not distinguishing between trans who self - ID and those with a GRC as the Equality Act states you can't ask for it in many cases.

Personally, I don't consider I have to do anything in my capacity as a private citizen.

Right, but there's an encroaching of rights whereby if you don't comply with the trans person, a business you are frequenting may feel compelled to take action against you, so as to not to be accused of permitting a "hostile environment" for the trans person.

They're currently less scared of being sued by the trans person for discrimination on the basis of gender reassignment than of being sued by a woman on the basis of sex. Partly because there's just another level of indirection involved there - you have to argue that women are particularly inconvenienced by having to bow to trans demands, hence making it sex discrimination to require that.

What would happen if we refused to comply? Would using sex-based pronouns instead of preferred pronouns be a crime, for example?

No it wouldn't.

TRAs will insist misgendering is "hate speech" but there's no legal precedent whatsoever for that claim.

Pronouns are in the eye of the beholder. You can't jail someone for saying what they see. TRAs would love to jail people for non-compliance but thankfully they aren't in total control (yet).

Remember, though, that what is written in law and what a captured Police officer may decide to do anyway can be entirely different things.

We’ve already seen examples of:

• selective policing of events
• arrests for legal activities like stickering
• arrests / ‘invitations to attend’ for nebulous hate speech allegations
• blatant ignoring, by police forces, of doxxing and threats of violence towards GC women
• consequences in court for ‘misgendering’ your attacker.

It can be the process itself which ends up being the punishment, and we’ve seen a good example, very recently, of how quickly police forces will move to cover up for their own. Even when the evidence of illegal acts is staring them in the face.

A captured ‘officer’ can get away with repeated examples of what would rightly be seen as harassing behaviour, if it were being carried out by Joe public.